Lorene Cary

Highly respected African-American author, educator, and social activist who – for over 25 years – has worked to deliver stories that the world needs to hear: from autobiographical to historical to fictional

“A powerful storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted with an ear for the pounce [of] real speech.”

-The New York Times

Black Ice is a book about "being black in a quintessentially white world, female in a male environment, scrape-by middle class in a rich world, and nontraditional newcomer in the traditional" and "a cautionary and hopeful story about the journey to belonging" 

-Ellen Goodman, Los Angeles Times Book Review 

"Lorene Cary has an eye like Steadicam, and details the world around her with such precision and eloquence that her experiences become sharp and clear and "real" to us."

-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"Probably the most beautifully written and the most moving African-American autobiographical narrative since Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

-Meredith College

• Writes about affecting issues: race, the lives of women, education, growing up
• In 1998 Cary founded Art Sanctuary, an organization that uses the power of black art to transform individuals and unite groups of people.
• Collaborated with the National Park Service on the new video installation, “President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation" (Independence Mall in Philadelphia). 
• Her new book, If Sons, then Heir, writes with intimacy and compassion about the power of family secrets, the hard legacy of lynching and segregation, and the resilience of the human spirit .